


No Cheap Thrill

by icepixie



Category: China Beach
Genre: Episode Related, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 12:11:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4834880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icepixie/pseuds/icepixie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Make you a bet.  If the war's really over, you come back with me to Boston."</p><p>What might have followed if a certain late-night conversation in "A Rumor of Peace" had zigged instead of zagged.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Cheap Thrill

"Don't you dare ask for my address," Colleen hissed at Richard, just after she'd taken his stupid noisemaker and thrown it towards the surgical suite. "Or tell me that you're going to write." Disgust dripped from her voice. "And don't you even _think_ about saying goodbye."

Richard was taken aback, she saw, but he volleyed her serve immediately. "I'm not going to say goodbye. Because I know we'll see each other again."

Oh, God, her eyes were watering. Just perfect. "Sure," she muttered, looking away from him.

He put a tentative hand on her upper arm. When she didn't shake it off, he rested more heavily, the skin of his palm cool against hers, where she'd warmed up her muscles giving him his ill-gotten backrub. Still, she didn't turn her gaze to him.

"Don't you want it to be true?" he asked.

From the moment people had started believing that damned radio broadcast was more than a rumor, she'd felt a growing horror at the possibility. If the war was over, that meant she'd be on a plane back to Kansas, to a house that was too big with just her mother in it now. She'd be lost, working the everyday calamities of triage at the county hospital while yearning for a rush of casualties from an overrun firebase, and hating herself more every time she wished for it.

Everyone here would be scattered to the winds, and while Beckett would write, Boonie might send postcards, K.C. would call at odd, lengthy intervals...no, it would never be the same. It never could. Seeing them again would be like going back to elementary school and finding all the tables and chairs were so much shorter than she remembered, the slide on the playground not nearly so far off the ground. The only way to prevent it would be to stay here as long as possible.

She didn't want it to be true because she didn't want the war to end. What the hell did that say about her?

"I don't want to say goodbye," she said eventually to the medicine cabinet on the wall.

"Then don't."

That got her to look at him, at his face, which right now was completely uncolored by his usual irony. "Come back with me to Boston."

She felt a prick of disappointment at first, because he still thought she was talking about him and that meant he'd understood _nothing_. Then his words sunk in. "What?" she asked, stunned.

"Make you a bet. If the war's really over, you come back with me to Boston. If it's not, you get something from me of equal value."

The ward looked the same, but it felt like the entire world had just shifted. She couldn't help but recall his admission a few minutes ago, the one that had made her heart seize for a moment before she brushed it off as exhausted rambling.

"As what?" she finally managed to ask. At his inquisitive look, she said, "Come back with you _as what_?"

She could hardly show up and introduce herself as his nurse, could she?

He shrugged, and she honestly couldn't tell if he was just concealing what he wanted to say or if the question truly hadn't occurred to him, as if he thought they'd just continue on as they had since they arrived in Vietnam. "As whatever you want."

She narrowed her eyes.

"It's win-win for you," he said. "If you're right, and the war isn't over, you don't go anywhere. And if it is, you know I'll never hold you to it."

And the thing was, she did.

"If I win, I want your chocolate rations for the rest of our tour," she said. Was that of equal value? He loved those damn D ration bars, even though they were tasteless and impossible to chew. But they were better than no chocolate at all.

He winced, but after a long moment, he nodded. "All right. Do we have a deal?"

Right now, at this very minute, half of her believed the war was still going on, that soldiers were dying and jungle burning out there. The other half thought the next twenty-four hours would bring confirmation of the peace accords. She had absolutely no idea which side led her to say, "Deal."

* * *

Two nights after they'd all learned that the war was still very much on, Colleen barged into Richard's quarters in the officers' tent with her heart in her throat, but certainty in her footsteps. She flipped on the light, and though it was just the one bulb, it was enough to wake him. Her calling his name as loud as a drill instructor (she blamed her nerves for the volume) probably helped too.

She came into the room, pausing about a foot from his bed. "What if I want you to hold me to it?" she asked as he stared at her blearily.

He blinked several times and raised himself up on his elbows. "McMurphy, it's"—he looked at the alarm clock on his bedside table—"three in the morning. You're going to have to give me some context here." He squirmed upright as she spoke, until he was sitting up, the rumpled covers falling around his knees.

"Our war's going to end. In nine months, we're going back," she babbled. He still looked lost. "So you're going to win, eventually. What if I want you to hold me to our agreement?"

The logic made sense at three in the morning, anyway.

"You want to come to Boston when we get out?" he asked slowly. Wonderingly.

"As whatever I want," she reminded him.

His forehead furrowed. "Just as a point of clarification, what do you want?"

For God's sake. She was alone with him in his tent, in her pajamas, at three in the morning. "What do you _think_?"

Just then, a bomb exploded. It was a mortar, and it sounded like it had gone off mere yards from the tent, close enough to whip the canvas against the tentpoles and set up a ringing in her ears.

Colleen froze. She knew exactly where to go and what to do when this happened at the hospital, or the mess hall, or the women's quarters, but she'd never been in Richard's tent when the base was being shelled, and for just a second, she couldn't move, caught like a rabbit in headlights.

Richard grabbed her hand and yanked her to the floor, slamming her knees painfully against the packed dirt. He slid under the bed, still holding her hand, and her brain caught up with what was happening. She wriggled under the mattress next to him.

The narrow single bed had never been intended to shelter two people. It barely covered one. She and Richard huddled together, pressed front-to-front to keep all their limbs under what flimsy cover the bed offered. It was so low that the rough metal twists that formed the corners of each diamond-shaped bedspring scratched their shoulders and caught in their hair.

Another shell went off nearby, and she felt Richard tense against her, his fingers tightening around her shoulder, where he'd put his hand to pull her further under the bed. She was just as stiff. God knew she hated the claustrophobic bunkers, but waiting out a bombing under a bed, her own or anyone else's, wasn't really any better.

And they'd been so _close_. Couldn't the VC have picked _any other night_ to take potshots at them?

Just as she was working up a good level of pissed off that was nicely overriding her earlier fear, Richard moved his hand from her shoulder to her cheek and kissed her.

Surprise froze her for a second. Then she forgot all about the VC and melted against him, even closer than when they were just miserably trying to keep the shelter of the bed over both their bodies. The noise of the airstrike receded as she opened her mouth to him and closed her eyes.

He'd definitely figured out what she wanted.

When they parted, she kept her eyes closed for a moment before another mortar rattled the ground, startling them back open. She and Richard both cringed at the sound, at how close it was. The light she'd turned on flickered for a moment, throwing his face entirely into shadow, before it came back on with a distressed whine, the light reaching just far enough under the bed that she could still pick out his features.

"Romantic spot you picked for this," she said. The teasing was automatic. Humor, preferably of the blackest possible variety, was one of the two ways she'd developed over the last year and three months to get through an air strike. The other required a flask that was unfortunately halfway across the base in her quarters.

He cocked an eyebrow. "I was _not_ going to die without getting to do that at least once." His voice may have matched her own teasing tone, but the smile that appeared on his face was anything but. He looked like he'd just been given a wonderful gift.

"Just once?" she couldn't help asking.

He took it as the invitation she'd intended.

Colleen wasn't sure how much time passed before they came up for air again, but it was long enough for her hand to have worked its way under his pajama top, and for his knee to have slipped between her thighs. The bombing seemed to have died down, the booms and cracks no longer so close, although perhaps she had just been distracted.

Slowly, gently, he ran two fingers through her hair, stopping to twirl one lock around a knuckle. She sighed in utter contentment, or at least as much as was possible with the sounds of the assault still rumbling outside. The VC had definitely started to lose interest, though. Several seconds now elapsed between each impact, and they'd obviously run out of their larger caliber ammunition.

"You really want to come to Boston?" Richard asked softly.

Her fingers twitched over the skin of his collarbone revealed by the open neck of his pajama top. "Why else would I be here?"

"Cover from flying shrapnel?" he suggested.

"I can get that in my own tent." Now she trailed her fingertips down his sternum until she met the first button of the shirt. "When we go back to the world, I want to go with you."

He caught her hand in his just as she started pushing the button through the button hole. " _We_ will never have Paris," he said, affecting a French accent.

"Good. I hate Paris," she shot back immediately.

Not that she'd ever been there, but now she had no desire to go. Especially not in the company of French doctors. Other cities sounded much more appealing.

"I'll keep that in mind," he said, and a smile like she'd seen just after he'd kissed her for the first time graced his mouth.

Only popping sounds came from outside now, either VC snipers spending the last of their ammo or their side trying to flush them out. Soon it would be safe to get out from under the bed, at least as safe as it ever was here. They should probably go check on their patients, see if there'd been any damage and if the night crew needed any help.

Richard touched her face, tracing his knuckles down her cheek before cupping her chin. Thoughts of the hospital retreated, if not entirely, then at least to the back of her mind. "You know," he said, pensive now, "for weeks after Beth Ann sent the divorce papers, I was glad I still had eighteen months left. I couldn't imagine how going back would ever feel like going home."

"What changed?"

"What do you think?" he replied, quirking an eyebrow.

Her breath hitched, and it was not at all due to the gunfire outside. "Oh," she said, feeling a stupid grin spread over her face and a happy, pleasant warmth settle in her stomach.

They spent the next several minutes until the all-clear just watching each other in the light from the single bulb, smiling now and then and running their fingers through hair and over what skin they could reach without stabbing themselves on the bedsprings. Colleen never did get the button she'd been aiming for undone, but, she thought somewhat giddily, there would be plenty of time for that in the future.

When the last sounds of the strike finally died, they peeled themselves apart and slid out from under the bed. Colleen was grateful to stand up and stretch, but she already missed Richard's touch. Almost as soon as she'd had the thought, he was next to her, his hand coming to rest at the small of her back like it had belonged there for years.

"Shall we see if anything's left of the hospital?" he asked.

"I guess we better. It's almost all FNG's on shift tonight. They won't know what hit them."

With a pause for Richard to put on his boots, they left the tent and started picking their way along paths dotted with debris from the attack. It was still dark and not all the base lights were working, but from what they could tell it hadn't been too bad. There was what looked like superficial damage to one of the enlisted men's barracks, and the mess hall had taken a direct hit and was now sporting a hole in its corrugated metal roof. Hopefully no one had been in there in the middle of the night.

The hospital, when it came into sight, proved to still be standing, and both Colleen and Richard let out brief sighs of relief. There was no flurry of activity outside and no chopper blades beating the air, which were both good signs.

Richard stopped them on the helipad. "It occurs to me that since according to you, I won our bet, I should get my chocolate rations back. Starting with the one you squirreled away in the ward desk yesterday."

She pretended to think it over. "Yes, but it's nine months until we go back. Which means the war's still going on _now_." Magnanimously, she offered, "Fifty-fifty."

He narrowed his eyes. "Eighty-twenty."

"Sixty-forty. That's my final offer."

He mock-glared at her, but nodded. They continued toward the hospital. "Anyone ever tell you you drive a hard bargain, McMurphy?"

"Remind me to tell you about the time I convinced Brendan to trade his entire baseball card collection for a dozen root beer barrels."

His eyes widened, and he blinked in surprise. "Why do I get the feeling I have no idea what I'm getting into?"

"Because you don't," she answered blithely.

They reached the door. Instead of pushing it open, Richard turned to her and said, "Go easy on me?"

She smirked. "If you're nice to me."

He closed what little distance there was between them and put his hands on her waist. He dipped his head and murmured next to her ear, "Find me after our shifts are over tonight and I'll show you how nice I can be."

She kissed him, because he was so close, and because she could. "You've got a deal."


End file.
